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> Why would the price be that high? You said: "the price of toilet paper should have been increased by an order of magnitude at the store level. This would pre

> Why would the price be that high? You said: "the price of toilet paper should have been increased by an order of magnitude at the store level. This would prevent hoarding". How high do you think the price per roll would have to be to ensure that no one (not even rich people or a small group of rich people working together) could afford to buy up a pallet of toilet paper to try to resell at a higher price? It'd have to be pretty damn expensive. Expensive enough to price out most people since a millionaire can afford to pay so much more than someone making below minimum wage > Also, you’re incorrect about producers having the right incentives. They are incentivized by money, not a higher calling to wipe ass. Read my comment again, I never said anything about a "higher calling". I explicitly said that their incentive was profit.

xp84 3y ago
An order of magnitude literally means 10. Not 100,000. Usually it costs like $1-2 a roll, so it should have gone to $10-20 a roll as soon as shelves emptied the first time. That would have meant that people would have bought only what they need (they would not have seriously spent $1000 on TP), but nearly all people could have afforded say $40-50 to get a 4-pack to get them by a week until more were delivered. That minimizes consumers’ excess hoarded inventory— which is where all the TP was. Instead, IRL, anyone who could find them were buying up several massive packages because it was only the normal ≈$20 for 20 rolls situation, so “heck, buy 60, 80, maybe 100 rolls! Who knows when I’ll get this lucky as to find it again?” Meaning suddenly everyone was buying and warehousing way more TP than they needed in 6 months. Not adjusting prices literally caused the shortage.